


You can hold her hand and show her how you cry

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-13
Updated: 2007-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-02 16:36:25
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8674738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: "...as time went on, we wondered if Sam was lying to us - it seemed he like he was born right there under the California sun..." An old friend from Stanford recounts the days when Sam graced the ocean side.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

**You can hold her hand and show her how you cry** *  
*coconut skin – damien rice  
**Fandom:** _Supernatural_ (Stanford era; implied Sam/Dean)  
**Summary:** _…as time went on, we wondered if Sam was lying to us – it seemed he like he was born right there under the California sun…_ An old friend from Stanford recounts the days when Sam graced the ocean side.  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Characters:** Sam, Jess, OCs [implied Sam/Jess; Sam/Dean]  
**Word Count:** ~2,700  
**Warnings:** implied incest  
**Author’s Notes:** n'aww, this was fun. ♥  
written for [ ](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_outsidepov/profile)[](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_outsidepov/)**spn_outsidepov**. prompt: _a classmate of Sam's before of after he leaves Stanford_  
  
Feedback is appreciated! =D  
  
 

> -  
>    
>  To say Sam came into Stanford like a whirlwind would be a lie; he came in quiet and surreal, fitting safely between everyone even though he told us he had never really had a home and didn’t really know the scene. But as time went on, we wondered if Sam was lying to us – it seemed like he was born right there under the California sun. He didn’t come in like a whirlwind, but there was one when he left us behind.  
>    
>  It started out with him diligently arriving on time to each class and that shocked every one more than his sheer will to jot down everything the professor said in class. We – the group – spent most of our time out at the bars, because what better place to party then on the boulevards? We asked Sam to come along, but every time he turned us down, smiling that stupid little smile he always had and would make excuses about homework and studying.  
>    
>  I had never seen someone so determined to actually _make_ something of their lives. Deep down, resting somewhere unknown in me, I knew Sam had something to prove to someone – or maybe it was just to himself. I never pushed it, but whenever we rushed out into that cool night breeze, I felt that Sam was going to make a difference in the world, even if it was only within himself.  
>    
>  I should introduce the group – it started with just three of us: me, Randy and Justin. We all came from the same neighborhood – high end, high class, whatever you want to call it, we were well-to-do and didn’t care if you knew it or not – and, naturally, applied to the same school. There, we added on Randy’s numerous girlfriends and Vincent, who was the starting quarterback for the Cardinals and Justin’s cousin. Somewhere along the line, we added in Andrew from up north in Nebraska and Trevor who had fled from Miami, which he said looked exactly the same as the west coast. We never believed him.  
>    
>  Girls weaved in and out of the group – they never really stuck – until Jessica Moore caught Trevor’s eyes, they had a fling and we didn’t really want to let her go after they broke up. It didn’t take long until Rebecca and her brother Zach showed up and were instantly added, along with Stacie and Miranda, the twins that Vincent repeatedly tried to get on (at the same time) but always managed to crash and burn, much to our amusement.  
>    
>  Sam was the last ever addition to the group. It’s not that we were running out of space or we just couldn’t handle anymore; when Sam sat down beside me in Pre-law and introduced himself, his large eyes and larger smile seeming to eat up everything else in the room, it just seemed that he completed the group. He _fit_. We could just never make him come out of his room even if it was going to kill him.  
>    
>  He started getting out of his hovel of a dorm room though when Jess sashayed into his room one night, all blonde hair and nice curves, and asked quietly in his ear if he’d like to join her. I could see him swallowing his nerves as he pushed away from his desk, law books left open and naked, and grabbed his jacket, never thinking twice.  
>    
>  For days, we thanked Jess for getting Sam out of that dorm, but we all knew she wanted it as bad as we did.  
>    
>  The first night we got him drunk, it was somewhere on the beach; there was a patio stained with the ocean and unlimited booze and Sam took it all back like water and air and everything he’s ever needed. We watched the stars sparkle across the sky and Sam told us stories about the back roads of American and naming off all the towns he had ever been to.  
>    
>  We were always wrapped up in his stories, hanging on every word because he always had something to tell, something to say. But you noticed a vacant look in his eye, like a barrier, when he talked about his life. About where he has been and how he never wanted to go back. Once was always, always enough for Sam.  
>    
>  That was the first few nights; there was usually something about diner burgers from the time he was five and knowing the entire world from the back seat of his dad’s car. We never did find out why he went every where he did and why he never stopped, never slowed down, though it seemed like he would’ve liked nothing better than to lie down and give up.   
>    
>  All we knew is that when his mom died, his dad never stopped running. Like stopping somewhere too long would’ve let the memory catch up with him.  
>    
>  For awhile, when Sam told us his tales we were left with hanging words, left to piece together what we knew to try and paint us a picture of who Sam was when we didn’t know him. I always imagined him standing on a dusty back road, watching the sun fall behind trees and hills, and always thinking about the ocean. Sam seemed to fit better by the ocean.  
>    
>  It wasn’t until a few months after that we heard of Dean. It wasn’t that Sam talked of him constantly, but we knew of him, just in passing, when Sam recounts the time he got lost or he got lost on purpose. Small snippets of this man, this brother, that seemed to be stuck to Sam and never letting go. We didn’t start hearing the stories about Dean until a few months later, when Sam graduated from beer to hard liquor.  
>    
>  Sam would tap his glass and Jess would wrap her fingers around his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. We all knew it was the beginning of a story, the beginning of a picture that always turned out different in our heads. Different from what it really was.  
>    
>  We always knew Sam was leaving something out, we just could never find out what.  
>    
>  “He always listened to Metallica.” And that’s how it started, the stories weaving into each other and fitting because now there was someone standing beside Sam on the dusty back road. He just never thought of the ocean, only thought of moving, moving and moving on. Never stopping to let this kind of memory, this kind of secret we never knew, catch up with him.  
>    
>  That’s how Sam always put it.  
>    
>  Dean was painted as this dark type, following footsteps blindly and working into fitting into this life that Sam could never find his place in. Dean was this watcher, a constant presence over Sam and he always talked about how he never appreciated Dean’s vigilance to keep him safe until he was gone. He was drawn as bright-eyed and loud-mouthed, stubborn and slightly obnoxious, beautifully graceless and moving with the wind.   
>    
>  We were always eager to hear more about Dean – he was so opposite of Sam that we wondered how they could even be related. We wondered how Sam had survived it. But he always wore a small smile on his face when he talked of Dean, like fading memories were too much.   
>    
>  “He taught me how to do body shots,” Sam said one day, nicely tight and holding onto Jess for dear life, scared he’s going to fall into the crashing waves. He whispered it to me and only to me; there was this glint in his eye, like the barrier was breaking down and for a second, I caught a glimpse of who Sam really was.  
>    
>  I just never realized it until it was too late.   
>    
>  After that, we never heard much about Dean and we knew every town from Birmingham to Duluth and all the places in between. Sam kept coming out with us, but his stories were few and far between and we fell back into the comfortable, drifting silences that accompanied all the outings before Sam. He sank well into them, finding his place in a chair, beside Jess and smiling blissfully as the world moved on around him.  
>    
>  I always wondered if Sam was ever scared to stop moving, like his brother and dad. If he was afraid of the memory catching up with him. But I think he was more afraid of remembering Dean and everything he had been to him; maybe the ocean drowned that memory out.  
>    
>  \-   
>    
>  Sam moved in with Jess a month after they became official, but we always knew from the beginning that they were meant for each other. Somehow, Jess’s hell and spitfire fit into Sam’s innocent mystery like missing pieces of the puzzle.   
>    
>  I was in my dorm, sleeping, when Sam burst in around midnight. It had been a few weekends since Sam moved in down the hall from me and, on occasion, when he got into Jess’s liquor cabinet, he was known to come charging in, all colors and noise. He never told stories anymore. Sometimes, he looked like he wanted to cry, his eyes bloodshot and wet, but if he did cry, I never saw it.  
>    
>  “Sam?” I sat up in bed as Sam stumbled over to my bed and fell to his knees, like he had just been pushed down in front of the cross to pray, palms facing upwards. “Hey bud, what’s wrong?”  
>    
>  Sam stared up through his eyelashes, face shadowed in the moonlight and I saw the tears for the first time. My breath caught in throat.   
>    
>  “Sam, what’s wrong?” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him.   
>    
>  “You – _God_ …” He half-laughed, half-cried and shook his head. “– God, you know I love Jess. So much, right? You know that, right, Jeff?”  
>    
>  I didn’t understand, not at the moment. The tears were coming fast, like a waterfall, and I couldn’t look away from them. I thought something had gone wrong; that Sam, in a moment of drunken passion, had hurt Jess. Or maybe he had done something he was regretting: had we been right in exposing him to this world?  
>    
>  I glanced at him. “Yeah, I know that Sam. Tell me what’s wrong.”  
>    
>  “I love her, I love her so much…” Sam whispered, shaking his head and pulling himself from my grasp. “But, God, I love _him_ too.”  
>    
>  My hands fell to my lap, imitating Sam’s open ones.  
>    
>  “He’s… he was always there for me.” The sob that followed ran shivers down my spine. “God, Jeff, how could I _leave_ him there? How could I just go, no warning, nothing?” Sam buried his face into his knees, pulling himself into a tight ball on my floor. “He loved me. And… I _left_.”  
>    
>  I couldn’t smell the alcohol on his breath. I knew this was way too real. I _wished_ there was alcohol on his breath, so I could blame this lapse in judgment for him, so in the morning he wouldn’t have to remember. I wished there was alcohol because there was only one _him_ in Sam’s life.  
>    
>  “Sam.” And I stopped there. All train of thought came to an abrupt stop and I couldn’t go further than his name.  
>    
>  Sam shook, shoulders trembling and fingers grasping onto his pajama bottoms.   
>    
>  I didn’t know what to say.  
>    
>  -  
>    
>  I drove for hours, just to clear my head. Maybe to let Sam sort out his thoughts too, but it seemed like he knew exactly where he stood – I could see something I had never seen in Sam before. I couldn’t name it, but I knew the barrier had broken down.  
>    
>  I stopped on a turn off, a place for tourists to stand by the ocean. Sam was out of the car before I could fully stop, across the cement pad and down on the beach. I watched him stand at the edge of the biggest place in the world and for the first the time in a year, he looked like he didn’t fit at all.  
>    
>  For the first time since he talked about the past, I actually saw him better in the backdrop of dusty whirlwinds and sunken trees.  
>    
>  He was throwing rocks into the ocean, whipping his arm back and watching them fly; the moonlight accented the ripples and I watched them, toeing the sand. I could hear the grunts, the hidden sobs, everything because it was so quiet, so real and I didn’t want it to be.   
>    
>  Sam didn’t fit in this world anymore. He was too big for it.  
>    
>  “What happened?” It didn’t seem like the right question to ask, but it worked for Sam. He sighed, falling to the ground, head resting in his hands. He didn’t shake anymore.  
>    
>  “My dad never knew,” Sam began. I could see the corners of his lips curl into a knowing smile. “We always hid it so well.”  
>    
>  I hadn’t heard him tell a story for months and it was like we were back on the wooden patio, drinks all around us and this heavy warmth from the alcohol and the humidity weighing us down into our seats.   
>    
>  The breeze that blew in from the ocean that night was cool and the sand was itching my legs and Sam’s face was shining wet, but I couldn’t stop listening. He didn’t stop, just kept running with the words before the memories could connect with the words – like he was letting it all out before it hurt him again.  
>    
>  We watched the sun rise from over the ocean; it wasn’t that I couldn’t look at Sam the same again, I sort of understood… he just wasn’t the same. He wasn’t painted against the same back drop and it just didn’t work. Because Dean never fit beside the ocean.   
>    
>  -  
>    
>  Sam never mentioned the night again, just fell further into himself until I was pretty sure that I could never pull him out.  
>    
>  I never mentioned the night again because I just didn’t know when would be the right time to bring it up. I had so many questions, so many unpainted scenes, so many left out back drops but Sam never looked me straight in the eye again after that.  
>    
>  I knew he loved Jess, I could see it in the way he moved, but if you looked close enough, you could see the slight twitch of hesitance. I knew why he thought twice about each step. But he loved Jess and you can never really change that, even if Dean had taken all of Sam first.  
>    
>  \-   
>    
>  Jess came over the morning after Sam left.  
>    
>  “He left?” I was cooking noodles and she was sitting on the couch, knees pulled to her chest, curled into a safe little ball. Like that night; like Sam. “I can’t see Sam doing that.”  
>    
>  She shrugged, shaking her head. “Something to do with his dad missing.”  
>    
>  My head snapped up. “How did he know his dad was missing?” It seemed like Sam never really cared, not after what we’d heard. Not after what we’d known.  
>    
>  Jess looked over her shoulder at me, her eyebrows furrowed, like I just should’ve known. “Dean came. Dean said his dad was missing. Sam left right after.”  
>    
>  I dropped the pot on the floor.   
>    
>  -  
>    
>  I never knew whether it would’ve helped to tell Jess, but it was already too late before I could even consider it. The fire scorched their entire apartment, barely anything left, and all of us were pushed out onto the lawn to watch the red lick at the sky.  
>    
>  We didn’t know Jess was gone until we saw the body bag and Sam, the barrier back up and holding back everything. It had been building back up ever since that night, but only I knew that.  
>    
>  We watched the firefighters, we watched the sky, we watched and watched and watched and never found a thing to give us solace. To give us closure, though we could never really expect it.  
>    
>  But only I saw Dean.  
>    
>  He was exactly how Sam had painted him, almost perfectly. All dark colors and heavy strokes and this knowing, this purpose, etched into his face; I watched him, lost in the crowd. He was standing by the paramedics before he looked back to Sam. No one went to talk to him.  
>    
>  When they disappeared behind the lifted trunk of Dean’s car, I looked away. I heard the car start some time later, rev loudly over the sirens and hissing smoke and anguished cries, and I never knew that that was the last time I’d ever see Sam.  
>    
>  The whirlwind he left behind was enough to suffocate me and I knew I was the only one caught up in it.


End file.
